Book Publicity Madness

My book comes out in less than a week. I am doing a ton of press starting at 6:30 a.m. or 7 a.m. most mornings until then, and once I hit the ground in New York, it’s 12-14 hours a day for five days straight.

I wanted to share what Monday was like, just to give you a taste of the insanity and worlds colliding.

I woke up at 4:30 and almost got out of bed, but thought better of it and went back to bed until 6:30. I had three back-to-back half-hour phone interviews with parenting outlets such as Bamboo Magazine. I applied makeup and straightened my hair during the first interview, got dressed and packed up my stuff during the second, and drove during the third.

I had five minutes between interviews to rummage around and kiss the boys and wish them a good day with their dad.

The third phone interview ended as I arrived at the home where I teach the seminar in neuroscience I am holding for 11 darling and very motivated homeschoolers, ages 11-16. I taught for two hours. Today’s lesson involved compiling a bibliography for their research paper, and reviewing with each student how their research is going for their papers, adding references where needed and defining terms such as cataplexy and hypocretin where appropriate (the topic is neurological syndromes and the technological advances used to diagnose and treat those syndromes).

I flew out of the door and picked up my publicist and we dashed off to a 20-minute photo shoot for a piece about me that will run in the LA Times this Sunday. I made it to the Warner Brothers studio with two minutes to spare and started rehearsal within minutes of plopping my stuff down. We taped in front of a live audience until 10 p.m. and I crawled into bed with my boys and got ready for the next day which will start with phone interviews at 7:30 a.m. and hair and makeup at 8 a.m. to prepare for the Nightline crew invading my house that morning.

It’s an exhausting blessing to write a book and to be wanted for all of this amazing press (Nightline, Good Morning, America, The View, etc!). But it’s also really intimidating and overwhelming. I wish you all a restful week and weekend, and know that when Monday comes, I will be tottering around Manhattan on 5″ heels picked out by my stylist making it look easy. But it’s not. I promise you, it’s not.

I will see you on the other side of my book release. And make sure to check the author bio on my book for my shout out to Kveller, the place where I found my voice as a writer and will always come back to. Because here, I don’t have to make it look easy. I just have to make it look real.

Mayim Bialik hosts her official blog about parenting and Judaism on Kveller. She is best known for her current role as Amy Farrah Fowler on CBS' The Big Bang Theory, as well as her lead role in the 1990s NBC sitcom Blossom. She is the grandchild of immigrants from Eastern Europe and the mother of two young boys.